EPT London Finishes Day 1A and 1B and Rolls Through Day 2

Monday, October 3rd, 2011 by Ryan

The European Poker Tour has continued to roll on and is currently at a stop at the Hilton Metropole hotel in London. The event drew in a good sized field, and one that will pay out a solid pay day to the eventual winner. The buy-in for this EPT event is £5000, and it kicked off with Day 1A two days ago on Friday; but only brought in 280 players. Day 1B drew in a much stronger field though, as 411 players registered for the event on Saturday. This brought the total for the event up to 691 players, which exceeded expectations in the end. This brought the total prize pool to just over £3 million, ending at £3.35 million. What these total numbers mean, is that 102 players will make it into the money, and £750,000 will be paid out to the winner of the event in the end.

There were quite a few big names out there throughout the first two days of the event, such as John Gale, who was a former World Poker tour Champion, and who led early on Saturday; ending in the top ten at the end of Saturday. A few of the other big names from Saturday who made it to the top of the leader board, were Justin Bonomo, and Sorel Mizzi, who ended up in fifth and sixth place at the end of the day. The top two players at the end Day 1B were Raj Vohra with 156,600 chips, and the chip leader, Benny Spindler with 160,800 chips.

Day 1B’s biggest eliminations came from names like Danile Negreanu and Vanessa Selbst; while players like David Williams, Jason Mercier, and Vicky Coren moved on to Day 2 which kicked off earlier today. Those three will join up with the Day 1A chip leader, Lukasz Golczyk, who ended up with 211,600 chips.

Day 2 kicked off strongly for some, and really put a hurting on some other players. Spindler continued to build his stack and at one point had over 300k chips. As far as the big named players go, many of them have struggled to get anything going, as Bonomo was an example of this when his pocket Ace’s couldn’t hold up against the Ace-Jack of Mercier. Bonomo wasn’t the only big name who was sent home early on Day 2, as Ville Wahlbeck, Chris Moorman, Soren Kongsgaard, and Noah Boeken were all eliminated as well.

As the players headed into the final level of play, Matthijs Remie was the chip leader with 390k in chips, and had a few players fighting to catch up, as Jonathan Layani had 325k chips, Spindler had 303k chips, Sam Grafton had 280k chips, and Basile Yaiche had 268k chips. One other big time name that is still out there is Doyle Brunson, who is actually playing in his first ever European Poker Tour event in history. As the players entered the final level, there were 210 players remaining, and it was anticipated that there would be less than 200 total before the end of the day.